BI4a 


Address  Delibered  Before  the 

Dashaway  Association,  Sunday, 

March  23,  1862 

By 
G.  Washington  Badger 


■I     ..  «i;^ ;.■*«■  v*:. 


i^j'sft-'-. 


AN 


ADDRESS 


DELIVERED   BEFORE    THE 


DASHAWAY  ASSOCIATION, 


Sunday,   March   33d,  1863. 


By  G.  WASHINGTON  BADGER. 


SAN  FRANCISCO: 
TOWNE   &  BACON,  EXCELSIOR   STEAM  PRINTING  OFFICE, 

No.  536  Clay  Street,  over  Pacific  Fruit  Market. 

1862. 


^■^. 


*      «•*  .*•   • 


ADDRESS. 


Mr.  President  and  Friends  : — I  trust  I  may  call  you 

all  friends,  as  we  all  love  the  Temperance  Cause.     A  new 

star  has  arisen,  and  there  is  hope  in  the  dark  night 

which  hangs  like  a  pall  of  gloom  over  our  country.     0 

God,  thou  who  lookest  with  compassion  upon  the  most 

erring  of  Earth's  frail   children,  I  thank  thee   that  a 

brazen  serpent  has  been  lifted,  upon  which  the  drunkard 

Sp  can  look  and  be  healed ;  that  a  beacon-light  has  burst  out 

*^  upon  the  darkness  that  surrounds  him,  which  shall  guide 

g  back  to  honor  and  Heaven  the  bruised  and  weary  wan- 

£S  derer.      Yes,  this  Dashaway  Hall  is  a  beacon-light  to 

=«=  the  weary  wanderer.     Yes,  Dashaways,  you  have  here 

|,    reared  a  memorial  of  your  conviction  of  that  unmeasured 

benefit  which  has  been  conferred  on  our  land,  and  of 

the  happy  influences  which  have  been  produced  by  the 

same  events,  on  the  general  interest  of  mankind.     You 

meet    here  as  temperance  men,  and  invite  those  who 

have  fallen  to  sign  the  pledge  and  shake  off  the  fetters 

that  have  crushed  the  strongest  of  Earth. 

You  have  marked  a  spot  here  which  must  forever  be 
dear  to  you  and  your  posterity.  I  wish  that  whosoever 
in  all  conaing  time  shall  turn  his  eye  hither  may  behold 
that  the  place  is  not  undistinguished  where  the   first 

370594 


great  temple  was  dedicated  in  California.  I  wish  that 
this  structure  may  proclaim  the  magnitude  and  impor- 
tance of  that  event  to  every  class  and  every  age.  I 
wish  that  infancy  may  learn  the  purpose  of  its  erection 
from  paternal  lips,  and  withered  age  may  behold  and  be 
solaced  by  the  recollections  it  suggests.  I  wish  that 
labor  may  look  up  in  the  midst  of  its  toil  and  feel  proud. 
I  wish  that  rising  toward  Heaven,  among  the  pointed 
spires  of  so  many  temples  dedicated  to  God,  may  con- 
tribute also  to  produce  in  all  minds  a  pious  feeling  of 
dependence  and  gratitude.  Let  it  rise  till  it  meets  the 
Sun  in  His  coming.  Let  the  earliest  light  of  the  morn- 
ing gild  it,  and  parting  day  linger  and  play  on  its 
summit. 

Look  abroad  through  the  cities,  the  towns,  the  villages 
of  our  beloved  California,  and  think  of  what  material 
their  population,  in  many  parts  already  (Jense,  and  every- 
where growing,  is  for  the  most  made  up.  It  is  not  life- 
less enginery;  it  is  not  animated  machines;  it  is  not 
brute  beast  trained  to  subdue  the  Earth.  It  is  rational, 
intellectual  beings.  There  is  not  a  mind,  of  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  in  our  community,  that  is  not  capable  of 
making  large  progress  in  useful  knowledge,  and  no  one 
can  presume  to  tell  or  limit  the  number  of  those  who 
are  gifted  with  all  the  talent  for  the  noblest  discoveries. 
They  have,  naturally,  all  the  sense  and  all  the  faculties, 
I  do  not  say  in  as  high  a  degree,  but  who  shall  say 
in  no  degree,  possessed  by  Newton,  or  Franklin,  or 
Fulton.  It  is  but  a  little  which  is  wanted  to  awaken 
every  one  of  these  minds  to  the  conscious  possession  and 
the  active  exercise  of  its  wonderful  powers.  But  this 
little,  generally  speaking,  is  indispensable.  How  much 
more  wonderful  is  an  eye  than  a  telescope.     Providence 


has  furnished  this  eye,  but  art  must  contribute  the  tele- 
scope, or  the  wonders  of  the  heavens  remain  unnoticed. 
It  is  for  want  of  the  Uttle  that  human  means  add  to  the 
wonderful  capacity  for  improvement  born  in  man,  that 
by  far  the  greatest  part  of  the  intellect  innate  in  our  race 
perishes  undeveloped  and  unknown. 

When  an  acorn  falls  upon  an  unfavorable  spot  and 
decays,  then  we  know  the  extent  of  the  loss.  It  is  that 
of  a  tree  like  the  one  from  which  it  fell.  But  when  the 
intellect  of  a  rational  being  is  destroyed  by  rum,  it  is 
a  loss  which  no  one  can  measure,  either  for  time  or  eter- 
nity. 

Oh,  the  fascination  there  is  about  the  habit  of  drink- 
ing liquors  !  Upon  an  ocean  strewn  with  wrecks,  upon 
whose  dark  waves  no  beacon  of  light  has  ever  gleamed, 
the  young  launch  out.  A  drunkard  dies  to-day,  and 
to-morrow  another  reels  into  his  place  in  the  bar-room. 
His  boon  companions  deprecate  the  man's  folly  with 
glass  in  hand.  A  murderer  stands  upon  the  scaffold  and 
points  out  the  cause  of  his  ruin  and  crime,  and  the  next 
day  a  fresh  score  step  over  his  new-made  grave  and 
covet  the  same  death.  Darkest  heathendom  has  noth- 
ing like  it.  The  Hindoo  mother  casts  her  babe  into  the 
Ganges,  but  she  yields  her  heart's  treasure  to  the  guar- 
dian Deity.  She  is  a  serpent  worshipper,  and  so  is  man, 
whose  fangs  are  red  with  the  life  of  his  child. 

The  infant  sleeps  in  its  cradle  and  knows  nothing  of 
life's  realities,  but  smiles  as  it  looks  up  into  the  fathom- 
less love-light  of  a  mother's  eye.  The  rum  traffic 
reaches  in  and  rends  that  mother's  heart  until  the  foun- 
tain of  life  grows  dry,  and  the  tender  infant  wails  for 
food.  That  babe  is  pinched  with  cold.  If  it  lives,  it 
finds  life's  pathway  darkened  with  gloom.     It  is  turned 


6 

out  from  the  shrine  of  the  paternal  roof  and  reared  in 
vice. 

In  after  years,  the  babe  of  the  cradle  stands  upon  the 
scaffold,  or  scowls  in  the  dungeon,  or  wallows  in  vice. 
A  great  people  have  looked  oa  while  the  fatal  net-work 
of  their  accursed  policy  has  bound  the  victim,  hand  and 
foot,  and  cast  him  down. 

Why  should  woe  and  want  be  carried  into  our  homes  ? 
Why  should  our  mothers,  and  wives,  and  daughters,  be 
scourged  until  they  weep  drops  of  blood  ?  Why  should 
children  be  turned  out  with  no  inheritance  but  orphan- 
age and  disgrace  ?  Why  should  the  props  and  pride  of 
old  hearts  be  snatched  away  and  broken  ?  Why,  in  the 
name  of  God,  tell  me,  in  this  land  of  plenty,  where 
our  barns  gush  with  fatness,  where  our  fields  groan  under 
the  harvests  which  roll  like  golden  oceans  to  the  sun- 
beams, and  where  an  ever  kind  Providence  has  scattered 
his  blessings  on  every  hand,  should  woman  and  children 
go  hungry  for  bread  ?  Why  should  our  sons  be  turned 
out  to  be  drawn  into  the  whirlpool  of  crime,  and  our 
daughters  to  forget  all  that  is  womanly,  and  sink  in  vice 
for  their  daily  bread  ?  Is  this  christian-like  ?  Is  it  like 
freemen  ?  Why  should  our  homes  be  turned  into  hells, 
and  the  husband  and  father  into  a  demom,  to  torture 
and  kill?  Why  must  those  whom  we  love  be  torn  with 
hunger  and  grief,  that  a  few  men  may  fatten  by  selling 
rum? 

A  young  bride  stands  at  the  altar  dreaming  of  a 
cloudless  future,  and  looking  with  a  woman's  devotion 
and  pride  upon  the  loved  one  of  her  choice.  Together, 
she  dreams  of  a  bright  journey  through  life.  But  the 
rum  seller  reaches  into  that  happy  home  and  wrings 
every  fibre  of  her  young  heart,  and  blasts  every  bright 
dream,  yoking  her  for  a  lifetime  with  a  living  corpse. 


Again,  a  young  man  stands  at  the  threshhold  of  man- 
hood, the  pride  of  the  home  circle,  and  a  heart  throbbing 
with  high  and  noble  resolves.  The  mother's  eye  has 
kindled  as  it  has  watched  his  ripening  years.  The  sister 
loves  him  with  a  sister's  changeless  love.  But,  rum 
reaches  in  and  shivers  the  idol  of  the  old  mother  at 
the  very  altar,  until  she  weeps  and  prays  over  the  blight- 
ing of  all  her  hopes,  and  sinks  herself,  like  a  blasted 
thing,  in  her  grave.  That  sister  may  tread  alone  the 
pilgrimage  of  life.     The  people  have  no  tears  for  her. 

Again,  a  father,  with  his  sun  in  its  evening  decline, 
leans  with  increasing  affection  upon  the  stalwart  form  of. 
an  onjy  son.  But  rum  has  blasted  the  bright  hope  of 
the  father's  old  age,  and  leaves  him  to  turn  alone  to  his 
broken  home,  and  no  child's  hand  to  lay  his  white  head 
in  the  grave.  Here  is  a  point  which  writes  the  traffic 
all  over  with  deep  damnation,  and  brands  a  great  people 
with  worse  than  cowardice.  Men  who  will  coolly  and 
deliberately  fold  their  arms  while  such  ruin  is  being 
wrought  in  our  social  relations,  are  unworthy  the  name 
of  freemen. 

Again,  sir,  whence  comes  this  vast  army  of  drunkards, 
who  throng  every  avenue  of  life,  and,  with  ceaseless 
tread,  move  on  to  the  grave  ?  Where  are  the  fountains 
which  feed  this  stream  of  wretched  humanity  ?  Where 
is  the  cause  ?  Day  and  night,  from  year  to  year,  the 
unbroken  column  moves  on.  The  grave  swallows  sixty 
thousand  in  twelve  months.  The  sod  is  hardly  closed 
upon  a  fearful  sacrifice,  before  its  cold  arms  are  thrown 
up  to  embrace  as  many  more.  And  so  this  host  moves 
on.  Recruits  are  ever  enlisting.  The  youth,  in  the 
saloon,  takes  the  drunkard's  place,  and  so  back,  until  the 
legions  are  wrapped  in  the  sun-light  of  youth.     The 


8 

diorama  of  life  is  moving,  and  so  it  has  moved  for  ages, 
the  measured  and  gloomy  tramp  taking  hold  upon 
dishonored  death. 

The  present  Sunday  Law  regulates  the  liquor  traffic, 
and  with  what  result  ?  Are  the  facts  not  startling  to 
contemplate  ?  We  trust  with  hope  and  faith  to  our 
school  rooms  and  churches  for  influences  which  shall 
promote  all  the  best  interests  of  society.  By  the  side 
of  these  institutions  are  those  which  directly  counteract 
all  these  influences,  and  sap  all  these  interests.  Like 
consuming  cancers,  they  eat  always  upon  the  vitals  of 
society.  Their  work  of  injury  never  rests.  The  Sab- 
bath of  God  is  no  more  respected  in  the  rum  shop  than 
religion  in  the  pit.  All  the  influences  of  the  rum  shop 
are  against  religion  and  the  teachings  of  the  Sabbath. 
It  educates  for  evil.  Its  very  atmosphere  is  pollution ; 
a  moral  miasma  which  is  sickly  with  moral  death. 
Virtue  and  purity  cannot  exist  there  without  injury. 
The  associations  are  contaminating,  and  the  language 
and  sentiments  pernicious  in  the  extreme.  If  you  wish 
to  hear  bold  and  unblushing  profanity,  linger  in  the 
bar-room ;  if  obscenity  and  every  variety  of  low  vul- 
garity, linger  in  the  bar-room ;  if  you  wish  to  hear 
scandal  and  wholesale  slander,  female  character  black- 
ened with  pollution,  and  virtue  and  religion  the  target 
of  sneers  and  scoffs,  linger  in  the  bar-room.  The 
Sabbath  is  a  general  holiday  there.  They  are  the 
rendevous  of  all  the  low  and  vicious  in  society,  and 
thus,  from  ten  thousand  sources,  the  leprous  influence 
comes  up  to  canker  and  blacken  all  that  is  cherished  in 
our  Sabbath-day  privileges.  See  you  nothing  to  startle, 
in  all  this  machinery  of  evil  ?  The  reckless  and  unprin- 
cipled rum  seller  is  more  potent,  for  the  time  being, 
among  his  kegs,  than  the  minister  in  his  desk. 


^ 


Thus,  sir,  throughout  the  land,  your  boasted  regula- 
tions make  the  Sabbath  one  of  the  great  days  of  bar- 
room festivity,  and  such  is  the  result  of  regulating  a 
wrong.  The  idea  is  not  more  absurb  than  infamous. 
It  is  a  foul  compromise  with  iniquity  ;  a  yoking  with 
saint  and  devil ;  a  compound  of  heaven  and  hell ;  an 
infernal  adulteration,  which  lifts  up  and  legalizes  wrong 
and  pulls  down  the  right ;  a  draping  of  the  three-mouthed 
dog  of  the  pit  in  the  habilaments  of  a  guardian  angel, 
to  stand  and  smile  at  the  door  sills  of  the  pits  of  earth. 
The  principle  would  associate  the  arch-fiend  with  Deity 
on  the  throne  of  heaven,  and  mingle  the  wails  of  the 
lost  with  the  praises  of  the  redeemed.  It  would  unite 
the  worlds  of  bliss  and  woe,  and  place  angels  on  a 
footing  with  devils.  Does  God,  sir,  in  his  government, 
recognize  such  a  principle  ?  Do  His  laws  regulate  theft, 
swearing,  perjury,  murder,  etc.?  Do  His  retributions 
slumber,  when  so-called  respectable  men  trample  on  His 
laws? 

Yet,  the  license  system  is  a  creature  of  legal  enact- 
ment, and  stands  before  the  world  this  day  as  the  great 
fountain  head  of  nearly  all  the  crimes  which  endanger 
the  peace  and  blacken  the  character  of  society.  A 
man,  for  the  sum  of  jQfteen  dollars,  is  allowed  to  deal  out 
the  poison  which  nerves  the  villain's  arm  which  carries 
the  torch,  or  lifts  the  knife,  to  burn  or  destroy.  He 
scatters  fire  brands  and  death  throughout  the  whole 
land,  blights  hope  as  bright  as  bliss,  destroys  happiness, 
the  holiest  and  purest,  and  sweeps  on,  like  an  avenging 
storm,  until  all  that  is  pure  in  childhood,  noble  in  man- 
hood, or  venerable  in  age,  is  withered  and  crushed  to 
earth.  Life,  happiness  and  hope,  virtue,  love  and  truth, 
are  alike  blasted  by  these  men  allowed  by  the  State, 


10 

and  protected  by  its  laws,  to  sell  rum.  The  policy  is 
wrong  in  motive,  impolitic  in  principle,  atrocious  in  its 
execution,  and  most  cruel  in  its  consequences.  It  is  a 
principle  so  damnable  in  its  conception  and  character, 
and  so  sweeping  and  remorseless  in  its  destruction  of 
human  happiness  and  life,  that  it  may  well  crimson  the 
cheek  of  an  American  freeman  with  deepest  shame. 

But,  however  wicked  the  principle  or  policy  of  licens- 
ing a  man  to  sell  rum,  may  I  point  you  to  the  effects  of 
such  a  system?  The  present  scourge  has  become 
gigantic  in  its  strength,  and  world-wide  in  its  desolation. 
It  overshadows  every  land,  and  in  every  class  or  station 
of  human  society  it  has  grown  up  on  its  throne  of  skulls 
until  the  wail  of  its  sorrow,  and  the  curse  of  its  madness, 
and  the  burial  of  its  dead,  goes  round  the  earth  with 
its  sunlight.  The  wintry  wind  that  chills  to  the  heart 
in  the  wretched  tenement ;  even  the  summer  wind  that 
cools  the  cheek  of  the  wife,  who  is  dying  by  inches  in 
the  drunkard's  home*;  pauperism,  as  it  stalks  through  the 
streets  in  rags ;  the  idiotic  laugh,  or  fiendish  curse,  which 
falls  upon  the  ear ;  the  crushing  of  bolts,  as  we  enter  or 
pass  the  gloomy  prison,  all  speak  a  history  which  is 
most  fearful.  The  very  atmosphere  which  wraps  our 
altars,  bears  the  intelligence  that  the  work  of  ruin  and 
death  is  still  going  on.  But,  if  truth  and  history  were 
to  be  listened  to,  instead  of  draping  the  infernal  traffic 
in  the  tinsel  of  respectability,  why  not  ransack  every 
stenching  pest  house  in  society ;  dive  deeply  down  into 
the  darkest  dens  of  infamy  and  guilt,  where  the  base, 
unprincipled  and  abandoned  crawl  and  slime,  and  promis- 
cuous iniquity  and  diseased  humanity  reeks  and  rots  in 
lowest  degradation  ;  hunt  out  the  wretch  who  is  learned 
in  all  that  is  foul  and  leprous  in  vice,  and  black  in  crime. 


11 


and  adorn  him  with  the  authority  to  go  out  to  curse  and 
kill  everything  that  should  come  in  contact  with  his 
poisonous  breath ;  then,  select  some  locality  where  God's 
fierce  wrath  has  been  written  upon  every  blade,  and 
leaf,  and  field,  in  language  of  most  blighting  desolation, 
and  where  some  temple  of  death  lifts  its  dark  walls, 
damp  and  dripping  with  the  green  moisture  of  pestilence, 
its  altars  slippery  with  blood,  and  its  atmosphere  the 
malaria  of  death  and  double  fitted  as  it  sweeps  the 
brow  of  corruption,  where  God's  sun  light  has  faded 
out,  and  in  the  fierce  glare  of  infernal  light  should  fall 
fearfully  upon  the  guilty  faces  of  the  maddened  hosts  a 
upas,  dripping  with  death  and  casting  their  withering 
shadows  over  all,  every  breath  simoon-like,  the  scorch- 
ing blast  of  the  pit,  and  every  stream  a  Stygian  tide,  to 
roll  lazily  on,  thick  and  poisonous,  through  the  waste. 
There  place  the  instrument  of  ruin,  and  let  him  sell. 
The  damps  of  rottenness  should  gather  upon  every 
glass;  kindred  spirits  should  gather  to  break  the  still- 
ness with  their  night-fiend  revelry  and  unearthly  laugh- 
ter; cursings  and  wailings  should  come  up  from  the 
depths,  and  the  knashing  discord  of  the  living  should 
mingle  with  the  anthem  of  the  damned ;  shrieks  should 
sweep  through  the  corridors  of  the  infernal  fabric,  and 
the  revelers  crowd  and  jostle  and  curse  at  the  gates ; 
the  bones  of  the  victims  should  bleach  and  glare  in  the 
sickly  light,  and  whitened  skulls  look  out  upon  the 
scene ;  accursed  should  be  written  upon  all  things,  and, 
at  the  entrance,  the  road  to  hell  upon  earth.  All  would 
then  be  in  keeping,  and  not  so  bold  an  outrage  upon 
justice  and  truth. 

But,  why  sell  rum  as  a  beverage  at  all  ?     Can  you 
tell  me  Christian  men  sit  down,  deliberately,  and  say  to 


12 

those  who  wish  to  sell  rum,  how  many  pieces  of  silver 
will  you  give  us  if  we  will  betray  these  women  and 
children  into  your  hands,  all  this  is  cool  and  deliberately 
cruel.  Life  and  all  its  bright  hopes  are  thus  bartered 
away,  while  an  oath  sits  heavily  on  the  soul.  Does 
your  cheek  tinge  with  shame,  as  you  take  in  the  length 
and  breadth  of  this  policy  ? 

In  a  pecuniary  point  of  view,  it  is  ruinous ;  for  every 
dollar  thus  received,  hundreds  are  paid  out.  It  is  a 
fearful  drain  upon  the  substance  of  the  people.  Evils 
are  sown  broadcast  over  the  land,  and  we  reap  a  burden- 
ing harvest  of  woe,  want,  crime  and  death.  All  that  we 
cherish  in  this  world,  and  hope  for  in  the  next,  is  put  in 
the  scales  with  dollars  and  cents.  For  ten  or  fifteen 
dollars,  a  man  is  delegated  to  scatter  a  moral  plague 
throughout  the  land  and  fatten  upon  the  substance  of 
the  people.  Every  dollar  he  receives  is  hot  with  the 
scalding  tear  of  widowhood  and  orphanage.  As  it  falls 
into  the  public  coffers  its  dull  sound  echoes  back  the 
wail  of  the  famished  and  defenseless.  Ho,  for  the  price 
of  blood  !  Hoard  it  well,  for  an  ever  living  God  has  piit  its 
cost  on  record.  At  the  tribunal  of  the  judgment  stands 
the  record  of  the  unutterable  evils  of  the  rum  traffic, 
and,  as  witnesses  against  it,  stand  the  myriads  whom 
the  policy  destroyed  on  earth. 

Again,  there  is  a  kind  of  property  destroyed  which  is 
seldom  thought  of,  in  viewing  the  consequences  of  the 
rum  traffic.  As  the  traveler  stands  in  the  seven-hilled 
city,  and  dreams  of  the  greatness  of  the  once  proud 
mistress,  he  looks  around  with  awe  for  the  evidence  of 
that  greatness.  The  winds  sigh,  among  the  crumbling 
ruins,  like  the  footsteps  of  the  past,  and  he  finds  himself 
alone   in   the   silence   of  desolation.     The  ruins  have 


I. 

outlived  the  greatness  of  the  once  proud  empire.  He 
sits  upon  the  broken  columns,  which  silently,  yet 
eloqu  mtly,  speak  of  the  Greek's  skill.  But  that  classic 
land  is  only  remembered  in  history,  and  perpetuated  in 
her  exquisitely  chiseled  marble.  The  proudest  struc- 
tures of  earth  pass  away.  The  ivy  creeps  over  the 
ruins,  and  dust  gathers  thickly  upon  them.  Even  the 
pyramids,  should  time  continue,  will  waste  away  under 
the  beatings  of  the  storm,  and  mingle  with  the  sands  of 
of  the  desert.  But  there  are  monuments  which  never 
crumble.  There  are  structures  which  lift  up  proudly 
amid  the  surgings  of  ages,  and  bid  defiance  to  time  and 
storm.  We  muse  sadly  where  lie  the  ruins  of  empires, 
and  tread  carefully  where  nations  are  entombed. 

But,  to  me,  there  is  no  sight  so  utterly  saddening  as 
a  mind  in  ruins.  I  weep  from  a  heavy  heart,  as  I  see 
the  gloom  of  a  rayless  night  gathering  over  the  mind, 
and  the  structure  which  was  moulded  by  the  hand  of 
God  crumbling  into  ruins.  The  mind  is  property  which 
is  of  more  value  than  all  the  wealth  of  the  material 
universe,  and  here  is  where  we  find  one  of  the  most 
startling  effects  of  intemperance.  Here  is  where  the 
system  wars  upon  a  class  of  property  which  cannot  be 
gauged  by  dollars  and  cents.  There  are  ruins  thickly 
strewn  up  and  down  the  land  over  which  the  patriotic 
philanthropist  and  christian  can  weep  with  keenest 
sorrow.  Look  into  the  bar-room,  where  swarm  the 
infatuated  inebriates.  Their  slavering  nonsense  disgusts, 
and  their  wickedness  shocks  you.  Turn  away  ?  No,  sir ; 
stand  within  the  threshhold  :  it  is  a  licensed  house,  and 
the  man  behind  the  bar  is  fit  and  competent  to  keep  a 
tavern.  You  voted  for  the  men  who  licensed  him  to 
do  this.     Now,  sir,  stand  within  the  throat  of  the  seeth- 


14 


ing  crater,  and  snuff  the  fumes  that  come  up  from  the 
ever  active  and  consuming  fires.  Turn  away  from  the 
hoarj  drunkard  in  rags,  whose  shaking  hand  is  lifting 
the  glass  to  his  lips,  to  a  scene  close  by.  Stretched 
upon  his  back,  with  leaden  eyes  rolled  back  in  the  head, 
and  the  arms  thrown  out,  lies  a  man  of  middle  age, 
slowly  breathing  in  the  deep  stupor  of  lowest  drunk- 
enness. The  face  is  nearly  a  lived  purple,  still  darkening 
beneath  the  eyes,  and  assuming  a  living,  burning  red 
upon  the  brow  and  temple.  He  is  evidently  a  man  of 
middle  age,  and  his  form  was  once  of  rare  and  noble 
beauty.  Both  mind  and  body  are  now  crumbling  into 
decay.  His  comrades  have,  through  mockery,  placed 
coppers  upon  his  eyes,  and  straightened  out  his  legs 
upon  the  floor,  and  there  he  lies  in  the  bar-room.  Even 
the  dog,  who  comes  in,  snuffs  daintily  and  turns  away 
from  the  bloated  countenance  with  signs  of  loathing 
and  repugnance.  A  scene  of  a  more  sickening  and 
humiliating  character  could  hardly  be  presented — and 
that  was  once  a  noble  and  gifted  man.  His  was  a 
brilliant  and  powerful  mind.  The  beauty  of  his  form 
was  only  excelled  by  his  nobleness,  integrity  and  moral 
worth.  He  was  adored  by  his  friends  and  relations — 
honored  by  his  fellow-citizens,  and  respected  by  all. 
His  was  a  bright  promise  -for  the  future.  The  eloquent, 
the  noble,  the  gifted,  and  the  true,  lies  there.  That 
mind  is  in  ruins.  Pillar  after  pillar  has  been  under- 
mined by  the  subtle  stream,  until  there  is  scarcely 
enough  to  show  the  once  classic  beauty  of  the  structure. 
A  fortune  has  vanished  like  the  moving  mist.  A  lovely 
wife  has  gone  to  the  grave,  broken  hearted,  with  the 
babe,  destroyed  by  a  brutal  hand,  sleeping  on  her  breast. 
His  old  father  and  mother  have  gone  down  in  sorrow  to 


15 


their  rest.  A  sister, with  a  devotion  that  never  wavered, 
clung  to  her  only  brother,  until  a  blow  from  that 
brother  struck  her  down,  and  she  sits  a  dreaming  lunatic 
in  the  asylum.  See  you  no  destruction  of  property 
here  ?  The  eloquence  which  thrilled  in  the  Senate  of 
his  State,  and  that  wisdom  that  gave  dignity  to  her 
counsels,  has  been  trodden  down.  The  orator  and  the 
statesman,  the  amiable  husband  and  the  upright  citizen, 
lies  lower  than  the  beast,  in  the  common  drunkery. 
Every  hope  in  life  is  blasted,  and  with  a  mind  reeling 
on  the  verge  of  madness,  the  poor  benighted  wanderer 
stumbles  on  to  a  premature  and  dishonored  grave. 
And  this  is  but  one  case  of  many  I  could  name —  but 
the  catalogue  is  endless.  There  is  no  resurrection  from 
the  wide  waste  of  ruins.  Here  are  whole  temples  of 
genius,  where  everything  that  is  intellectual  and  God- 
like, in  humanity,  is  buried  beneath  that  lava  tide  which 
has  so  long  swept  on  in  its  course. 

Again,  a  voice  comes  from  the  grave  of  every  victim 
of  the  home-curse.  Gather  them  all  in  shadowy  form, 
and  the  mind  shrinks,  and  a  chill  creeps  into  the  heart 
at  the  contemplation.  How  many  graves  thus  speak. 
How  many  injured  and  lost  ones  look  in  sadness  upon  a 
world  still  groaning  under  the  burden  of  suffering,  want, 
crime  and  blood !  God,  what  a  gathering  host !  The 
hunger-pinched  child  and  the  heari>broken  mother,  the 
fool,  the  maniac,  the  gambler,  suicide  and  murderer,  all 
speak  from  the  dead  to  the  living !  That  voice  is  deep 
and  fearful  against  the  rum  cause,  and  by  all  that  is 
rending  in  human  suffering,  or  black  in  human  crime, 
appeals  with  %11  the  solemnity  of  that  language  which 
is  written  upon  earth  on  the  dark  walls  of  the  alms  or 
prison  house,  or  upon  the  burial  spots,  with  their  cold 

37U394 


16 


marble  and  heaped  up  graves,  to  the  Hving  upon  earth, 
the  philanthropist  and  Christian,  the  freeman  patriot,  to 
matron,  sire  and  son,  to  every  heart  which  throbs  with 
love  for  humanity,  country  and  heaven,  which  loves 
earth  and  hopes  for  bliss,  to  battle  with  a  Christian's 
zeal  and  a  Christian's  faith  against  the  common  enemy 
of  our  country,  hearts  and  homes. 

God  is  with  us  ;  who  shall  falter — 

Justice,  who  withstand; 
Onward,  then,  for  hearth  and  altar, 

Right  and  our  Native  Land. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


APR  2  9  J952! 

JAN   2  7  V..^ 

IW^L    DEC     411967 


0£G4  mi 

A9t 


^  M^RlO 


REC'D  LD-URL 
AUGl  iM 


Form  1,-0 
2Sin-2,'43(o20.~) 


021989 


ItMTtJB^OC-V    r> 


\    A 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    000  898  985     7 


University  Research  Library 


r 


m»i 


